Wordsplats
by AHumblePen
Summary: Writing Exercises centering around the X-Men, particularly Gambit and Rogue.
1. Fear

_Fear_

He could feel the rough asphalt against his cheek, feel the broken skin of the street with fingers made long and slender not by time or maturity but by necessity and hunger. The hiccup in the wall was just big enough for his body to twist into, one knee pressed awkwardly against his ear and a shoulder wrenched painfully into a position it shouldn't have been able to acquire in the first place. He clung to the hope, to the idea that here they would not find him, that he'd be passed over for just one night, but in his inner heart he knew it wasn't true. It had never happened before.

He had too pretty a face.

It was too easy, when they'd have enough booze and couldn't find a paint-faced whore in time to satisfy whatever primal, carnal need it was that curled through their veins. A soft-faced boy would do, after all, if they turned him to the wall and ignored how he cried, ignored all the subtle differences in the motion. It even saved them money.

How easier was it, then, when they didn't even bother to think of their victim as a boy?

He could hear, now, hear the heavy stumbling steps draw closer. Low voices muttered in tangled languages, laughing at each other and lifting cardboard boxes to croon 'meeno-meeno-meeno' as if they were searching for a cat. He knew better, and knew, now, it was only a matter of time. He closed his eyes, swallowed reflexively, prayed.

It was the stench of absinthe that snapped his eyes back open, in the seconds before the heavy hand clamped on his twisted shoulder and pulled him sideways out of the niche in the wall to toss him unceremoniously to the alleyway's pavement. There were two of them tonight, two wide and burly men whose teeth glinted in light that fractured down from the cleaner street beyond. The second man frowned, briefly, and hope of salvation dropped clumsily from his tongue. "Hey, now, Pierre, wha's dis? 'S jus'a boy. Can' be eigh' years, hien?"

Thick fingers knit in his hair, pulled his neck back savagely until he was staring wide-eyed up at the even thicker faces. Features blurred with the pain, but the first man's words were clear. "Look at dose eyes, look how dey glow. _Diable, oui?_ Devil. D'serves wha' we giv'em. Put de fear o'_Le Bon Dieu_ in dis one, hien?"

The darkness closed, merciful, even as the first man drug him upwards by the hand wound in his hair.


	2. Sex

_Sex_

When he closed his eyes in the thick dark of his own room, he knew how it would be if it were ever to happen. He could piece together his experiences, pull from this memory and that recollection, matte her face along it all and almost have it, there in the shell of his own skin.

It would start with a hesitant feather-light touch; she had spent too far and gone too long without so much as the breath of contact to jump immediately into the heavy petting. Her hands would wander over him, tracing the broad planes of the muscles of his chest, the accordion array of his stomach, first over his clothes and then, gradually, peeling the cotton and the denim away to slide her hands over his bare skin.

She would avoid his groin for a long time, fingerprints dragging over his flesh until he was hard, so hard it ached. But eventually, inexorably, her attention would draw inward. Fingers that had seemed so hot elsewhere would be cool against him here, suck his breath from his lungs in a long, vaguely surprised hiss. They would explore with a faint blush, superior strength easing his legs apart so she should cup and soothe, trace the lines and contours of him until his voice trilled softly in the bottom of his throat.

Her tongue would come next, encouraged by his response to questing fingers, and briefly he would strain against the bed, shoulders rolling. Long sweeps of heat would be replaced by the shivering cool that was the wake of her tongue, sloppy kisses would grow longer and more sloppy until eventually, somewhere between the kisses and the dragging tongue it all blended together and she'd slip the warm of her mouth over his very tip.

He'd burble high-voiced, reactions sharp and honest, and pull his hands up to tangle them into his own hair, only to avoid tangling them with hers. She'd enjoy that reaction, and swallow around him, inexperience and briefly dragging teeth made up for by a sudden eagerness. She would take it slow, taunting him until his voice dragged along his larynx, and although she might have intended to pull away just in time, she wouldn't know the meaning of the way he jumped in her mouth, wouldn't recognize the way his back arced up to her until he was already spilling apart. She would open her eyes wide—sharp green searching for his own, although he wouldn't be able to see it through the haze and his lashes—and after just a second of bafflement she would swallow reflexively. She would keep swallowing, and it would be with sparked mischief that she licked him clean again when it was all finished. She would not allow him to relax.

Instead she would slide against him, lithe and smooth and insistent, and in the kiss she'd take from him he would smell himself, taste himself on her tongue, and it would send a chill down his spine to wind beneath his belly. It would be his turn, then, worn thief's fingers tracing over the curves of her body, learning the dip before her breasts and the swell of her hips. He would be gentle and careful, starting with long, light strokes from front to back as he watched her face stretch in wonder and pleasure. When she crooned to him, pressing her hips to his hand, he would smile secretively against her cheek and slip a finger gently upwards, testing her heat and warmth and allowing her to adjust to the feel of someone within her in such a different way than she was accustomed.

She would gasp, briefly, before she regained her composure, and dazedly drag her lips along his jaw. One finger would become two, and two become three, until he could feel her grinding her pelvic bones against his knuckles, muttering in breathy Southern drawl with her eyes half-closed. It would be then that he'd draw his hands away, bracing them just beneath her ribcage, and he'd lock her gaze with his, watching. Waiting. She'd breathe his name against the air, lost to herself, and with a deep-voiced croon of assurance, he would pull her to him just firmly enough to press through that brief twinge inside.

He would have to swallow her cries with his own mouth, and he would eagerly, feeling her voice tumble down his own throat. She would be all he knew, surrounding him, above him, long hair sweeping over his chest and body shivering, and he would worship her there, motions easy and rolling. It would become clear in that instant that all he ever did before, all the practice and the one-night-stands, were just a prelude to this moment, only to teach him what to be. She would surge against him—she was a quick learner—muttering into his mouth, and when the inexorable shift of muscle and pleasure began around him, bringing wordless feral ferocity growling between her teeth, he would be drug along. Then, they would be one, him inside of her, her drawing more out, and he would tell her in French, in English, in some language between that this was how it was meant to be. This is what he had been waiting for, for so very long. And then after they would lay, still tangled, and he would play with her hair as she leaned her head on his chest, and he would finally tell her—now that he had shown her—of all the plans and hopes he held frail and safe for them in the deep of his heart.

He could, when his eyes were closed and the room was empty in the deep of night, almost smell her near him, almost taste her shampoo. He never opened his eyes, to see if perhaps she had come to him unexplained in the middle of the night, to watch and want from across the room, because he feared if he did, she would be there only to see the tears in the red.


	3. Care

_Care_

When this memory had first surfaced in her mind, sharp and painful and so very obviously Remy's, she had curled up on her bed for an hour and gasped in the long, ragged sobs of a little boy's violated pain. When the images had receded, however, her own anger had bubbled past the Cajun's fear and Rogue had uncurled from the bed with a sudden jerk of motion, hands tight and eyes tighter.

She had gone to Forge first, bursting into his workshop without so much as a 'by your leave' while he tinkered with something or the other and demanded his attention. When that hadn't worked, Rogue had lifted the shaman bodily from his spot by the shoulders of his uniform and slammed him against the wall, voice growling. She was, when she wanted to be, a hard woman to ignore.

It had taken a lot of arm-twisting--in both the literal and figurative sense--a lot of threats and even a lot of pleading, but eventually Rogue had gotten her way and Forge's attentions in the workshop shifted from one project to another.

It also took time, of course, and in the interim she found herself skimming over every memory from Remy's childhood, growing more appalled and incensed by the moment. She wanted to take him close and smooth away the hurts, but her powers and his stubborn pride made that impractical, and Rogue knew if Gambit even once caught wind of what she was doing, he would find a way to stop her. He wouldn't understand why she had to do it. He wouldn't understand how much she cared.

That's what it boiled down to, in the end. How much she cared. She couldn't tell him, because in that fragile way that their relationship worked and didn't work all at the same time, an upset of balance would only lead to one or the other of them breaking someone's heart. It was always how it worked out, and this time Rogue meant to see it happen differently. In the back of her mind, she knew it was because she thought that maybe--just maybe--if one of them had lived with a decent childhood, then one of them could manage to do right by the strange love between them.

She didn't want to admit that she thought, maybe, if she righted the wrongs in his life, he would know what to do with their lives. She didn't want to admit that she had no idea what to do with her own, alone.


	4. Glass

_Glass_

There were days when she felt she could hold him in her hands and feel him, fragile and shimmering as glass. He put up a front of strength, as they always did, but she'd seen beneath the skin, she'd lived within those veins for a brief flash in time and she knew the truth.

He was a glass castle, just waiting for the first stone. He flashed his grin and tipped his hat and never once betrayed that he was hollow inside, never once implied that when he stood against the sun just right, the light slanted through him and it was like he wasn't there at all. There were sharp-edged catacombs of dispair within him, covered in hot blown filigree and hidden from the eyes that never looked too close, never wanted to see the imperfect bubbles in smooth and solid walls.

She wanted to come to him and help him rebuild, transmute the glass to steel with her own special alchemy, chip away the cheap paint to find the man she knew must be buried beneath.

Even when he was not near her--especially when he was not near her--she was aware of his frailty, aware of how hard the wind of a real world could blow. He had spent his time in the tempest, shaped and hollowed out and smoothed over, and now she was afraid if she did not take him in from the storm he would be lost forever.

Most of all, it made her angry. Angry to her core at the travesties, the horrors that made the kiln that tempered him, furious at the barbary of men in back-alley New Orleans on too much alcohol and not enough morality. It was incomprehensible, how they could take a wild-eyed babe and collar him like a dog, how they could use a boy--a little /boy/ dirty from the dank of the street--and use him hard, for their own pleasure without a  
mind to the way he choked on his own sobs, the way the blood dribbled out the side of his mouth from where sharp, baby's teeth had split the flesh.

It made her burn, made her turn her face from him, and she was sure in her heart of hearts that he always thought--always assumed--that the shame that touched her face was all his fault. She wanted to go back in time, rip a hole through the continuity and fabric of reality with her own two fists and tear into the men until there was nothing left but a smear and an afterthought and a stunned but grateful--but unharmed--child in the  
corner.

She wanted to break away the glass.


	5. Gore

_Gore_

He hadn't wanted it to come to this; he'd tried charm, he'd tried diplomacy, he'd tried shouting and cringing in a corner and every other possible solution to the problem, and none of it had worked. And now here he was, straining against the heavy ropes that lashed him to the table, subject to the solemn brushstrokes of ritual and tradition. His father's face was somber, dark eyes even darker with a serious doom, fingers practiced as the brush drew the paint across the planes of muscle that made up his bare chest. Thick red strain formed mystical and ancient symbols over his flesh and now, more than ever, he looked the savior that Jean-Luc had always claimed he would be.

His mouth was dry cotton, and he nearly choked trying to swallow the bitter wine, recite the lines of litany long memorized and unused. It was a strong wine—too strong—and it hummed along his veins, wrapping around the core of his muscles like an eager lover. Putting it aside was no option, however, just as avoidance had not been, and by the time he saw the bottom of the chalice his head was buzzing.

The Guild left him bare-chested and unprotected, loose linen pants and shoeless with a wide red sash around his waist and a long deadly rapier in one hand. It was a game of honor with the highest stakes, and armor would only lead to cowardice. The rapier had been tied to his wrist with crimson satin. At least, that is what Jean-Luc had said.

The other Guild had not, apparently, bound itself to the same precept of honor that his had. He was the living incarnation of a prophecy they had never appreciated, the sign of a future where their power would be stripped under the light of a new reign. It didn't matter that he didn't believe; it didn't matter that he did not want the so-called throne for which he'd been groomed for eight years. To them, he was an obstacle on the way to the true goal, and this was merely a last resort effort to get him out of the way. Julien's sword was heavier and broader, more scimitar than rapier and more deadly than ritualistic. He was dressed in a tight-fitting, easy moving sort of armor that had long been the secret of the Guilds, hard to pierce and harder to lose. His head was uncapped, wild and angry expression clear. Julien was going to enjoy this.

When the swords first met, the steel sparked like phosphorus, marking an assassin's eager strike against a thief's defensive roll. He had never liked bladed weapons—he would rather his familiar bo-staff to a rapier—and every time cutting edge met cutting edge his teeth gritted together painfully. He knew he had been pitted badly, and that as good as he was eventually Julien's killer instinct and heavier weapon would prevail. That would be the end of him, the end of the prophecy, and the end of the brief unity he had forged between the Guilds. He was almost comfortable with the idea.

That was, until Julien had opened his mouth. He was twisted, somewhere deep inside, and even as he bore down, pinned his opponent to the ground, he growled in deep Cajun French; dark stories of what he would do with the new bride—his own sister—once he had killed the groom beneath the sword. Words of handcuffs and razorblades, of abuse and death and further abuse and the inexorable feeling of power it all brought.

Something snapped within him, at the well-crafted words; memories of dark alleys and a feverish love that mixed in his blood with the alcohol and blazed his eyes crimson bright. Later, when it was all over, he would never be able to tell quite where he garnered the strength for it, but somehow it was there; he surged upwards, turning the tide and striking fast and low against the joint of Julien's suit where the torso met the leg. Fueled by a sudden rage, the rapier bit in to the hilt, thin blade sliding easily as a needle through silk. He snarled into the other man's face, nose curled and teeth bared, and the length of metal within his hand sang with a deep magenta light, screamed with kinetic energy that he pressed into it. It seemed so simple to let go and turn away, to listen to the dual scream of man and sword shut off abruptly in a squelch of sound.

He hadn't wanted it to come to this and now, he had broken their rules.


	6. Horror

_Horror_

He awoke shivering, and knew from the way his muscles ached after every tremor that he had been shivering for some time. Awareness came slowly, with the pulse of his heart in his wrists, and with every added bit of consciousness he wished, more and more devoutly, that he had remained unconscious.

The floor was cool, and slick with grime. He could tell because he was naked, curled on his side and feeling the nervous sweat edge around his ribcage and down to the metal of the floor. The room was pitch-dark, and even with the uncanny glow of his eyes lighting along his cheekbones, he could see nothing but black edged in red. With a groan, he tried to find the strength to curl his arms beneath him and push upwards, away from the floor. It was then that he realized he was not quite naked. Thick metal rested heavy against his collarbones, and he reached a shaking hand up to examine it.

It was a collar, slick and much thicker than anything that would ever be put on a dog. The very front of it, where it rested over his voice box, had been fitted with an impressive D-ring, onto which a chain fastened securely. Nominally, this would not have been a problem, but fingertips long trained and long sensitized by years of thieving told him that there was more to this collar than simple restraint. Faint lines etched the surface where wires had been set, and there was a trio of lights that he couldn't see, under his chin, one of which was warm from activity. It was a collar designed to repress his genetic code.

Panic speared through him, and he lurched forward, trying to find his feet beneath him. He found, by merit of a rude jolt to the neck, that the chain that latched to his collar also bound him to the wall, and allowed him no greater movement upwards than to his hands and knees. He could crawl the perimeter of the room, it was so small, but he couldn't take his feet.

He'd been trained for times like these, when he'd been captured after a job and relieved of everything useful for escaping, but each and every moment had relied on his bio-kinetic power to snap his bonds. Now, only human and frighteningly vulnerable with no clothes and no weaponry, he could feel himself slipping to a more savage and feral fear, a long-repressed phobia shading forward. It was not the enclosed space that bothered him—he'd been in tighter places than this without a problem—but the chains, the restraint that horrified him. He was trapped, caught against his will, and had no way of knowing when he'd be free again.

Desperate, he traced trembling fingers along the edges of the floor seeking a seam that could be teased and worked at until it let him loose. There was no such seam, however, and if he quelled his panic long enough to close his eyes and feel the movement of the air, he could tell it was spilling in from above. The chain that kept him from reaching the top of the box was bolted into place, and without his power he could not even begin to hope to remove it, tear his fingers to shreds in attempt as he might.

He did not know what was worse; the simple fact of being caught, or all the gruesome scenarios his mind played out of what might happen to him, now that he was helpless, at the hands of whomever his captors were.


	7. Love

_Love_

She'd bought a bathing suit during her last trip to the mall--a green and blue one with string ties on the hips that consisted of less fabric than some napkins--and every so often she would stand in front of the full-length mirror in her room and try it on, holding her thick hair up with both hands to watch the play of the thin straps over her shoulders. He almost always knew when she was in one of these moods, and almost always he was a dark shadow crouched on the sill of her window. Sometimes, he thought perhaps she knew he was there, but she never said anything about it. And she was quite the type to say something about it.

It had all started as a measure of ego; the unreachable goal, the unexecutable heist. She was the one thing he couldn't simply take without effort, the one thing in the world he would really have to _work_ for, and the idea of challenge after so long at being the best had thrilled him more than he'd really cared to admit. So he'd thrown all his considerable charm into the chase, latched on dogged and tenacious and learned just what he needed to say to worm his way as close as one could get to her.

But he had learned, slowly over those first few weeks when he watched her as she walked and ate, the little idiosyncrasies and larger spirit that lay beneath that skin he could not touch. He learned that she loved to work with her hands, hated having to wait for things, and feared the loneliness that gnawed at her in the deep of the night when she remembered all the things she couldn't have.

Gradually, inexorably, what was once just an elaborate job evolved into something more; something changed in the way he looked at her, the way he stood around her, and one night while he was standing on the porch enjoying the last of a cigarette with his back to the cool wood he'd realized, abruptly, that he'd fallen in love with her.

It wasn't like these things had been before; before, the love had been a matter of convenience, a matter arranged by others and agreed to by those involved because there was no better alternative. He'd cared then, of course, and cared deeply, but he knew with a biding certainty that before, he would have laid his life down for _no one_, just as he knew with a biding certainty that now, he would lay his life down for her.

It was after his epiphany that things had started to go awry for them; now that there was something truly at stake, those joking, gambling-on-her-reluctance offers for brief touch, for short contact were no longer joking but filled with an undercurrent of absolute seriousness. He'd offered her his hand once, ungloved and without pretense, offered her to share with everything about himself that he loved and everything he hated, and he'd astonished even himself with the absolute verity that if she'd reached for his skin, he would have never once even flinched.

She didn't know how to handle his reckless, careless, crazy sort of abandon, his disregard for his own person in an attempt to bring her something like happiness. She had been managing well enough when she kept everyone at an equal range, all out of arm's reach and temptation's sway; or at least, that was what she had told herself. He could tell that there was a hollow chamber inside, and she ached to fill it. He knew that he _could_ fill it, if she'd let him, but she was afraid. Afraid of what she'd been running from for so long, afraid of learning how to control it so that she'd have no excuse, any longer, to keep from growing serious about him.

He watched as she posed before the mirror, holding in the sigh that would surely give away his presence. White flickered through brown as she shifted her hair up, to the side, over her shoulder, tumbling free and moved her weight over her feet, a hand on her hip now, now both free by her side. He held still as he watched the tears well forward in bright green eyes, biting his lip, and crept back to the very edge of the sill as she turned violently to throw herself on her bed, back twitching sobs she refused to let free from her throat.

As she wound tighter in her sheets, curling fetal and despairing, he slipped back down from the window and to the ground. He had wanted to go the other way, to curl next to her in the bed and assure her that everything would be all right, but he knew that would only make things worse. It had all grown so complicated once he'd discovered love.


	8. Queen

_Queen_

She had always been queen after her mother's death; a young princess of a dark kingdom risen to power while her cheeks were still flushed with infancy. She grew up standing tall, bright eyes full of authority and command.

He had been entirely fascinated from the first moment, when he saw her deceptively ignorant to the men behind her with those heavy glinting guns and he leapt upon them, feral, with a pair of flailing rubber mallets. He still remembered the way her mouth had set against his audacity and the way that with just a flicker of her wrist she threw a knife straight through the handle of the mallet that balanced on the palm of his hand. They had been ten.

From the beginning, she had seen past all of his protective bullshit, through the fragile and savage creature beneath, and smiled a cool, calculating smile. Distantly, he had always known that she was humoring him, playing along with the grin that had lengthened as he aged, waiting for the moment when she could lash out with her talon grip and savage the psyche within. She was a well-trained killer; it would have only taken a single strike.

The chance was never given. Still young and uncertain, something else ad rattled his cage and he'd fled, exiled, eyes wide and frightened. She hadn't realized how far under her skin he had hidden until he left, and without his quick heat she straightened her back and drew cold. By the time he saw her again, he was stronger and forged anew. She was different to him; a woman who was a child no longer, and while she was filled with a regal distance, the impetuousness that had trapped him was gone.

She had always been a queen.


	9. Shriek

_Shriek_

It bounced off of the walls of the alleys, wound through wrought iron and old brick, and froze him in place. It was a feral sound, a scream of terror and desperation, and it flashed memories usually buried too deep behind his eyes. Easily as if it had been his intention all along, he shifted, flinging himself from one rooftop to the next in a coil of practiced muscle.

They were two alleys over, and a squat middle aged man with small rattish eyes leaned over a shivering girl. One heavy hand clamped down on the girl's mouth to prevent further shrieks, and while Remy couldn't understand what the man whispered to the girl, he could see clearly enough the fear in her eyes.

This would not do.

Like the snap of a match against its striking surface, Remy reached out into the cards he held in one hand and disturbed their very molecular fabric, charging them with bio-kinetic energy. He let the cards -- glowing a sinister deep magenta -- dangle carelessly from one hand as he squatted low on the roof, peering at the pair and smiling a heartless smile. He knew that in the shadows of the rooftop, the cards and his eyes were all they saw. "C'mon, now, _chien_. Don' tell me you ain't got de money to pay f'a girl who knows what she's doin'."

The squatter man curled his nose, narrow eyes narrowing suspiciously. There was something wild in the way he lifted his face towards the Cajun. "Back off, mutie, or you're gonna be next." Gambit could see straight through the bluff and to the fear in the back of the man's eyes.

Remy's humorless smile faded entirely, his voice dropping chill. "Ah, _je comprends_. You don' have de _brains_. I spell it out f'you. Leave. De girl. Alone."

It all happened smoothly, and Remy couldn't have choreographed it better. The man's eyes widened in rage, nostrils flaring, and the young Cajun pitched forward in a controlled roll off of the roof, free hand snapping his staff to length. When the man turned towards Remy, the Cajun caught him in the chest with booth feet, momentum forcing the man's superior weight over. Pressing the bo-staff to the other man's throat, Remy sneered, cards lighting his face in sharp angles. "Now it comes down to it, hien? I let go of dese t'ings, an' dey go boom in a big way. 'Sup t'you, whet'er you walk 'way from dis or 'f you lose half y'face. Can' say as it'd be much of a loss."

Remy leaned back, easing his weight off of the man and crouching ready. There was a long moment where the man just lay stunned, before he lurched to his feet and rand stumbling down the alley and away.

Remy sighed softly to himself, cutting the charge on the cards and straightening to his feet. Shouldering the staff, he turned to offer his hand to the girl still huddled in the corner. "C'mon, ain't nobody gon' hurt you now."

She had just slipped cool, shaking fingers into his when another shriek echoed in the distant night.


	10. Slice

_Slice _

He wasn't a _cutter_. He'd never be a _cutter_. Cutters were dirty; they were twisted people who took the knife and pressed it to their flesh, watched the blood well and drew some sort of satisfaction from the act. Cutters were screaming for attention and hoping that the jolt of pain would shock them away from the need, from the addiction of worried eyes and worried hands on them, pressing closer, whispering softly, offering help and therapy and just the right kind of pain to make the pills go away.

No, he wasn't a cutter. This wasn't about attention, at least not the garnering of it. He had attention, in spades, had too much attention, and not enough places to go where he could turn his head, duck behind his hair, and not _feel_ their eyes on his skin, as sharp and demanding as the fingers that would surely follow.

The act itself was something every man did, or rather every man needed to do, to keep from looking like a scrubby-cheeked woodsman in a society that favored clean-faced and boyish optimism. It was hardly his fault that all he had to shave with was a long straight razor that he'd stolen from someone's home, a broken bowl full of river water and some gel palmed from the trial-size section of the grocery store, a shattered mirror propped up against the dim wall of the warehouse.

Neither was it is fault that, when he guided the fatefully sharp metal over that tricky hook of his adam's apple, sometimes he paused, pressed until a thin line of red blossomed against the steel. It was not his fault that high along his jaw, in the crease where no one would see, there was a long white scar where he'd traced with the tip of the razor, watching as his throat sheened crimson. Who could blame him, when 'home' was an empty warehouse that had been slated for demolition ten years ago, 'bed' was a pile of dirty rags until the only ledge in the place that didn't leak, and 'dinner' was only a fantasy that abused his nose and stomach. It wasn't, after all, as if he was a cutter. He was only an escapist.


	11. Spill

_Spill_

He lay on the bed, back pressed to the rumpled sheets and hooded his eyes against the twilight-bright of the room. The music spilled out of the speakers of the battered stereo, flowed over his skin and settled across the washboard of his stomach, into the hollows just below his hipbones. He shifted his hands, knitting nimble fingers and resting them above his navel, and as he began to drift away he began to think of her.

He frequently thought of her, half-sleepy and sheened with himself; his mind tumbled over images of thick hair, a wide mouth, deep eyes. The last time he had seen her—downstairs and mussed, struggling with the coffee pot—she had thrown him a look that had meant to be exasperated and succeeded in being sultry. He had felt the heat slip into him, something curling warm beneath his skin, and retreated back upstairs to leave her with her caffeine.

The heat was leaking out again, running away along the tops of his thighs; banished by the same images that brought it to him in the beginning. He could feel the sloppy smile ease across his mouth and he ran his hands up to scrub them briefly across his face, up into his hair. With a smooth movement made only minutely difficult by the lingering tension in his legs and back, he rolled to his feet, reaching for a towel. Showers never chased the spill of life away, completely, but they were a good way to continue an already good day.


	12. Steam

_Steam_

Rain against the hot pavement made steam, rising up through the fingers of water. Seated on the dark shingle, he wasn't watching the steam. His eyes were closed, trying and failing to sort out the jumble his memories had become lately.

He was aware of her scent first, as she floated down through the rain to him, and second of the fingers combing through his hair. He shifted, trying to pretend as if his face was only streaked with rain, and lifted his chin to rest it on the knees he held drawn nearly to his chest. "'S you, ain't it?"

He couldn't look at her, but he knew well the way her brows would be touching together. "Whadda y'mean, it's me? It's me what?"

This wasn't going to be easy, he could tell. Then again, things between them were rarely easy, and he wasn't sure why he had expected this to be any different. He sighed, shifting again, and tucked his eyes so that he wouldn't have to meet hers. "De figure…de woman in all my mem'ries, who keeps savin' me from everyt'in'. 'S you, ain't it? You used Forge's t'ing t'send y'self back dere an' fix it all."

There was a long period of silence where she didn't say anything at all, just pulled her gloved fingers through his hair. As the silence grew, he bit his lip, watching the steam rise off of the driveway far below. When she finally spoke, her voice was distant and almost shamed. "Yeah. Ah did. Ah thought maybe…maybe y'wouldn't have t'hurt so much."

The sound he made was something between a choked sob and a laugh, and shocked through tense shoulders like a gunshot before he lifted his head to finally look at her. "What're you _doin'_ t'me?" There was a tremor in his voice he couldn't chase away, a desperation that made him curl his own nose in derision. "I used t'know where I was goin'. I used t'know why I feel de way I do. But now I ain't so sho' 'f it's b'cause I love you or b'cause you're some guardian angel from my childhood. An' de more I t'ink 'bout it, de less I'm sho' dat I _ever_ knew. Feel like I'm losin' my mind, chere. T'ings used t'be one way, I t'ink, but den dey aren't an' I start t'inkin' dey never were."

Green eyes blinked blankly, stared empty at him for a few too many seconds. "Whut?"

He shook his head, turning to stand and to pull away, to scrub a hand over his face and make his way towards the window that allowed him access to the rooftop he so frequently brooded on. "Y'got t'stop, chere. You got t'leave what's done be, or you're gon' drive me mad. Mebbe I ain't so happy wit' what I used t'be, what happened t'me when I was what I was, but I'm startin' t'like what I am now. Sho' be a shame t'mess it all up."


	13. Star

_Star_

Peace and quiet was a rare commodity in the line of business he'd fallen into lately, and he couldn't quite tell whether it was the peace or the quiet that really caught him off-guard.

The quiet was explained easily enough; there were few of the Mansion's residents willing to come to the roof and fewer still foolhardy enough to disturb his habitual place of brooding. Four stories up, the late night stars didn't seem any closer, but the ground was calm and far away. Hanging between Heaven and Earth, things were quiet, subdued. Time slowed and distorted out of measure.

The peace was harder to quantify. He was sure it had quite a lot to do with the warm body he curled his arms and legs around, confident it stemmed from the white-streaked brown his face rested carefully against. She was calm and still, and between them, things were easy. He wasn't sure why--he never quite understood the ebb and flow of their relationship--but between the cool breeze of the night air and the plain clean scent of her shampoo, he didn't care to know 'why'. Normally, he would be half-holding his breath, waiting for it all to fall apart, but tonight, somehow, was different.

Shifting carefully against her hair, he turned his face upwards towards the sky. Out here in the country, there was no light-haze to obscure his sight, and instead of a few speckles of light, the sky was crowded with stars. Perhaps it was this novelty that had him studying the sky so intently and allowed him to spot the falling star in enough time to nudge her attention to it. "Look."

Her head turned to track the motion, a secretive smile over her face. "Y'gonna make a wish on it, sugah?"

He took a deep breath, considering her question for a long time after the star disappeared. Eventually his own mouth was touched by a lopsided grin, and he bent to speak low in her ear. "Why shoul' I wish for somet'in' I 'lready got?"

The laugh she rang through the night was the first time in a long time that he'd heard her laugh without restraints.


	14. Truth

_Truth_

He'd heard somewhere, as a child, that the truth would set him free. He would have liked to have believed that, liked to have thought that if he was good enough, searched hard enough, a door would open and the light would stream through, and he'd be free of the pain and the fear.

He knew better now, of course. Now, he knew what truth was, and he knew that now, he was no more free than when he started. He knew that now, perhaps, he was even less so.

The truth was that not even the best thieves could make a living off of stealing alone, not without the Guild--not _against_ the Guild--and sometimes you had to make concessions to get by. The truth was that sometimes you had to steal the condoms you couldn't afford to buy, because it was your job to have them and if you didn't do your job you didn't get paid. The truth was that sometimes you had to lie on your stomach and take what was given because there wasn't anyone around to let you let you lie on your back and give what they'd take, and you had to smile about it afterwards, hood your eyes like always.

The truth was that sometimes in the dead of night you curled up into the smallest ball and let the fires inside ravage you, and you prayed to a God you didn't believe in to just make it go away, just this time make the hurt stop, and every time you opened your eyes there was less of the bed left.

The truth was that you'd been running for a long time, and nothing felt like it used to, nothing _felt_ at all, and you realized abruptly one day that you were born a street rat and doomed, always, to return to the streets and that all the happiness and joy you'd ever known had been stolen and fleeting.

The truth was that not even his name was his own, and the things he'd learned so gradually over the years could be pleasurable instead of painful had only become the tools by which he got by, the tools by which he survived.

The truth was he was down to his last pack of cigarettes and the frightening burn within him was flaring during the day, now, and that the smiles and the laughs he shared with the desperate ladies in the night were just as fake as the solace they sought from him. The truth was that he was scared out of his mind and at his wit's end and starting to eye the frayed knot at the bottom of the rope.

The truth had never done anything to him but put him in a cage.


End file.
